Court orders TB patient jailed

A court in Ottawa has ordered a man with a highly infectious form of
tuberculosis to be held in custody while doctors treat him.

Abdullahi Fourreh, who is from Ethiopia, has consistently resisted
treatment, claiming the drugs used to treat the disease are killing him.

But public health officials say he's already infected one person and they
intend to cure him whether he likes it or not.

Doctors tried three different drug therapies on Fourreh in an attempt to
reduce the side-effects. Each time Fourreh quit, finally deciding that his
doctors were "assassins" and "men without souls."

He also convinced himself that his tuberculosis wasn't that much of a
threat, says his lawyer Kevin Murphy.

"TB, as he put it, grows like weeds in Eastern Africa, and I think
he was suggesting there was some innate alternative way of fighting off the
disease, like overcoming a case of the flu," said Murphy.

Public health officials didn't see it that way. Pulmonary tuberculosis,
which can be spread by coughing, is the most contagious strain of the
disease. Ottawa assistant medical officer of health David Salisbury won the
court order detaining Fourreh in Toronto.

"We will need to know that he is no longer infectious and is
compliant with a treatment regimen that ensures that eventually he will be
cured of this disease," said Salisbury.

Murphy says his client now has few options but to take the drugs his
doctors prescribe him, or sit in jail indefinitely.